The present invention relates to an air conveyor guide adjustment mechanism. More specifically, the present invention relates to an air conveyor guide adjustment mechanism that provides infinite automatic adjustment of opposing air conveyor body guides within a preset range.
Air conveyors move plastic bottles along a tunnel through forced air. The bottles are suspended by their neck rings and the forced air is directed toward either the neck area or the body area of the bottles in the desired movement direction. Guides are positioned near the body area on either side of the bottles to provide stability and prevent bottle jams along the tunnel (e.g., due to bottles swaying back and forth). Typically, such guides include two discrete settings to accommodate bottles of two different widths. This is accomplished using a guide adjustment mechanism with a pneumatic actuator that controls the position of, and the width between, the guides. More specifically, the pneumatic actuator moves between a retracted position to accommodate bottles of a first width and an extended position to accommodate bottles of a second width.
Due to the two discreet settings of the pneumatic actuators, bottles that are not sized at the first width or the second width (or bottles not sized within about 3/16 of an inch to about ¼ of an inch of the first width or the second width) cannot be conveyed. In some cases, the pneumatic actuators must be switched out along the air conveyor or mechanisms with adjustable set screws, clamp collars, etc. must be manually reset along the length of the pneumatic cylinders to accommodate these bottles. These methods require a substantial amount of “off” time of the conveyor (i.e., changeover time) to make such adjustments. In addition, in other cases, additional settings are obtained by coupling cylinders. However, this method is cumbersome and still only allows two discrete setting for each cylinder added. It would be therefore desirable to provide a guide adjustment mechanism capable of automatically accommodating many different bottle widths with minimized changeover time.